How to Manage Negative Feedback on Social Media

15 Jun How to Manage Negative Feedback on Social Media

As a small business, your online reputation matters just as much as your offline reputation in today’s digital world.

Social media in particular, has really taken over in the past decade and it’s proven particularly useful to businesses across the globe. Now, you can connect instantly with your existing and potentially new customers, and it provides a platform for them to reach out to you too.

Unfortunately, this means if someone has an issue with your company, social media is often the first place they’ll turn to vent their negative experience. How you react and handle this negative feedback is imperative to your continued success. So, what do you do if you start to receive negative comments?

Never act defensively

You’ve spent a huge amount of time, effort, stress and money building up your business. It’s something you’re passionate about and you’re obviously going to be protective and bias when it comes to the products and services you provide. So, when you receive negative feedback, it’s common to feel you need to defend your company.

Don’t!

When responding to feedback (and you absolutely MUST respond), never do so in a defensive manner. Remember the age-old saying that the customer is always right, and put your personal feelings to one side. If you respond defensively, it will have a negative impact on both you and the business.

Have a negative feedback handling process in place

It’s important to establish a negative feedback handling process, so any comments can be responded to and dealt with quickly and professionally.

It’s not enough to simply respond to the feedback. Depending upon the complaint, you may need to pass the details on to a different department. So, you’ll need to ensure each relevant department can be easily contacted regarding the negative feedback, in order to deal with it as quickly as possible.

So, what if you do get negative feedback on social media, it can always be deleted right? Well, technically yes, but it’s a very bad idea!

The chances are, somebody already saw the comment. So, they’ll definitely notice, as will the person who left the feedback, if you remove it. Your online reputation is largely based on integrity. Therefore, if you start deleting negative feedback, rather than responding and handling it, it’s going to make the situation a whole lot worse.

Overall, social media can be a fantastic resource for businesses, but it also opens up a platform where customers can post publicly about you. Negative feedback cannot always be prevented, but it can be handled in a way that turns it into a positive. Need help with your social media management? See how Hands Digital Marketing can help.